Monette C. Hamilton, or “Mo Poetic”,as she is also known, is the Program Director for The Hamilton Essentials Foundation [www.THEssentials.org], a non-profit corporation that provides mental health through the arts, youth empowerment, life skills, leadership and staff development.

Monette was definitely born with a gift for oratory and has a unique gift to motivate a group of any age. Since 1998, she’s been honored and humbled to serve communities by providing enrichment spoken word and culturally related assemblies for several school districts, community centers, faith-based and nonprofit organizations. While listening to the voice of students that related to the assemblies, she furthered her poetic quest by expanding the components and curriculum to address the hunger for creative writing. “The Let’s Write Out Loud Program” and “Safe Speech Creative Writing Sessions” programs, based on the Common Core Standards in English/language arts, were developed by her to help kids fall in love with words. Over the years, Monette took her experiences of working with young poets, writers and artists and expanded her quest even further by focusing on the power of social media. She wrote The Media Minded Journalism & Media Internship Program to help youth gain knowledge and work experience in various vocations, representing journalism, television, radio and social media and The Radical Remnant Writer’s 5 Poetic Books of the Bible Series which provides students opportunities to discover different styles of Hebrew poetry and help them become proficient at identifying figurative language. This program serves the spiritual needs of youth and young adults throughout our community and uses writing as a survival tool of God’s glory.

Monette served as the Youth Organizer for the award winning “Young Visionaries Youth Academy” and birthed the “Pistols 2 Pencils Program”, (P2P), in San Bernardino, CA. P2P was funded by the California Endowment and advocates against the issues of gun and gang violence utilizing the basic principles of “The Let’s Write Out Loud Program”. The P2P youth educated themselves on policies and laws that affected them and were trained under Monette’s direction to organize and create campaigns to lobby for institutional and community change, leading a first-of-its-kind, youth lead town hall meeting.

Monette proudly served as the Peer-to-Peer Coordinator for the “Cup of Happy” program at Operation SafeHouse in Riverside, CA. The “Cup of Happy” program offers prevention and early intervention efforts prior to a diagnosis for mental illness, promoting emotional wellness for youth and young adults 16-25. Using her “Safe Speech Creative Writing Sessions”, youth learn to express themselves through writing, as a therapeutic processing tool, to gradually ease feelings of emotional trauma.

Lastly, but more importantly, Monette is the lead photographer and shooting director for Eye Take Pictures! [www.eyetakepictures.com] a wife, a mother, ordained minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and currently enrolled in the University of Bridgeport’s Ideal Program completing a double bachelor’s degree in human services and psychology.

Awards & Recognitions:

Nominated for an outstanding community organization award by The Rialto Alliance of Black School Educators (RABSE) in 2009